It is known to provide a step assist platform or bar to promote ingress and egress of a vehicle. Typically, most present day step assist platforms are fixedly mounted relative to a frame portion of the vehicle and thus do not articulate. Furthermore, the single, fixedly mounted step assist platform is often disposed at a height that is not practical for all users. Moreover, present day step assist platforms can be subject to high capacity load resulting in deflection or possibly even failure.
Present day articulating step systems are also known and typically employ some type of four bar linkage arrangement. The four bar linkage arrangement is used to deploy and retract a single step bar. The step bar is typically retracted under a rocker panel area of the vehicle, and when deployed extends out from the rocker panel area adjacent a vehicle door. However, such systems typically only make use of a single step, which does not necessarily provide an optimal and comfortable means of ingress and egress relative to an interior area of the vehicle. With modern day vehicles such as vans, pickup trucks and SUVs, RV's, buses, trains, planes, heavy equipment and other vessels requiring ingress and egress of occupant(s), often it would be more comfortable for occupants to be able to use two or more steps when entering or exiting a vehicle. This is so for people of smaller stature, and especially so for small children.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a telescopic step assist system that supports a relatively high capacity load. It is also desirable to provide a telescoping step assist system that affords the user with two or more steps, such that a smaller step height for each step can be implemented, to thus significantly ease ingress into and egress from a vehicle. Such a step system would also need to be relatively compact when in its stowed or fully retracted orientation, would need to be easily mounted to some suitable portion or substructure of a vehicle (such as to a frame portion of the vehicle), but not necessarily limited to only frame mounting.
Other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be readily appreciated, as the same becomes better understood, after reading the subsequent description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.